New from Cambridge University Press!

Sociolinguistics from the Periphery "presents a fascinating book about change: shifting political, economic and cultural conditions; ephemeral, sometimes even seasonal, multilingualism; and altered imaginaries for minority and indigenous languages and their users."

Chomsky, Noam (2002) Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History ofRationalist Thought, 2nd ed., Cybereditions Corporation, edited, with anIntroduction, by James McGilvray.

Reviewed by Sharbani Banerji, Ghaziabad, India.

Noam Chomsky's Cartesian Linguistics(CL) was first published in 1966,after the "Cognitive Revolution" had already begun. Some of thematerial in it was presented as a part of the Princeton University Christian Gauss lectures on Criticism early in 1964, when he was a fellow of the AmericanCouncil of Learned Societies. This second edition differs from the firstin being entirely in English. All the quotations, which were originallyin French or German, have been translated into English. Secondly, thisedition has an additional introduction called `Introduction forCybereditions' by James McGilvray, the editor of the book.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BOOK

The book `Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the history of rationalistthought' has four chapters, besides an introduction and a summary.In addition,there is also the editor's introduction:INTRODUCTION FOR CYBEREDITIONS by James McGilvray (pp.7-44)The book is supposed to begin with the following remark by A.N.Whitehead, which was originally there in the first edition, but isunfortunately missing in the second edition.

"A brief,and sufficiently accurate,description of the intellectual lifeof the European races during the succeeding two centuries and a quarterupto our own times is that they have been living upon the accumulatedcapital of ideas provided for them by the genius of the seventeenthcentury". A.N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World.

In his concluding remarks in the summary, Chomsky returns to this veryremark of Whitehead, having systematically surveyed the intellectualthought of 17th, 18th and early 19th century. Though Chomsky calls thisbook a survey,it is not exactly a survey. Despite the fact that in eachand every chapter, Chomsky draws the `ideas' of other thinkers, spanningan approximate period from Descartes to Humboldt,and systematicallyproves that the concept of `innateness' of language', the `UniversalGrammar'(UG) and the consequences thereof, viz.,in language acquisitionetc., were part and parcel of the rationalist and to some extentromantics thought,it is not a survey for the following reason:

It must be remembered that in the pre-modern period,disciplines like philosophy, psychology, linguistics etc., had not beendisconnected from eachother and thereby compartmentalized. As a result,many of the thinkers, scholars, philosophers, etc.,whom Chomsky quotesprofusely in this book, were not all engaged in linguistic or grammaticalstudies. For example, Descartes, hardly paid much attention tolanguage. Several of them were even antagonistic to the `CartesianDoctrine'that Chomsky draws out from their works. For example, Vaugelas,de La Mettrie, J.G. Herder etc., were more of empiricists. They were alsonotpart of a single tradition. Nor was there any person except Humboldt, whoprescribed to all the views of this doctrine. Yet, when Chomsky isextracting the `relevant ideas' from the works of apparently disconnectedworks of various kinds of scholars, not just grammarians, the `ideas'themselves are knitted so well, and are strung together so logically andsystematically, that they indeed turn out to be Chomsky's own ideas, andhence have contemporary significance. Thus,"Cartesian Linguistics",inChomsky's words, is "A constellation of ideas, and interests, that appearin the tradition of "universal" or "philosophical grammar",whichdevelops from the Port-Royal "Grammaire gnrale et raisonne"(1660); inthe general linguistics that developed during the romantic period and itsimmediate aftermath; and in the rationalist philosophy of mind that inpart forms a common background for the two".

Perhaps the choice of the word "Cartesian" by Chomsky has also beenguided by the fact that the 17th century philosophical movement begun byDescartes was called "Continental Rationalism". And, Descartes'sfollowers, who continued his teachings in Continental Europe were called"Cartesians".

To appreciate the depth and implications of CL, it is important to placethe book in right context, and in its proper perspective. The additionalintroduction by the editor James McGilvray in the second edition is meantto serve that purpose.

Before presenting a synopsis of the book, I shall make a similar attempt,that is, to give a proper `perspective' of the book, by discussing thetrends in linguistics which prevailed when CL was written, it's centraltenets, and it's importance as a milestone in the "cognitiverevolution".The central themes of CL have been adopted and extended in the studiesin generative grammar, just as the studies in language acquisition havetaken off from where CL left.Thus, the dramatic claims by Chomsky in thefield of language acquistion especially with regard to the existence of alanguage organ have also been discussed in this introduction.

INTRODUCTION

Cognitive science came into existence in the early 1950s, by breakingfrom the clutches of behaviorism which was reigning supreme then.It wasa period which initiated collaboration amongst several disciplines, asused to be the case in the premodern era, amply demonstrated in CL.Thecognitive revolution in theoretical Linguitics in the form of generativegrammar,was initiated by Noam Chomsky's 1957 book`Syntactic Structures'. That was the time when a lot of workstarted on `theories of mind'.However, Chomsky's contributions had begunwith his 1949 undergraduate thesis `Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew(1951/1979) and his 1955 `The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory'published 20 years later. But it was Chomsky's exhaustive 1959 review ofB.F. Skinner's "Verbal Behavior" that ultimaltely turned behavioristorrather empiricist assumptions into `reductio ad absurdum'.1950's mark the"second cognitive revolution", which revived and tried to makeprecisethe insights of "the first cognitive revolution" of the 17th and 18thcentury, and which is what CL illustrates explicitly. Thus, one may saythat CL is the mirror of "the first cognitive revolution", whichrecognizes that language involves "the infinite use of finite means",invon Humboldt's phrase.

The central tenets of CL as well as Chomsky's generative enterprise, ie.,both of first and second Coginitive Revolutions, in other words, ofCartesian doctrine is that, humans are `thinking beings', biologicallydistinct from `non-humans'. The human faculty of language is `innate' and`creative'. It is a true "species specific property". Without thisassumption, it is impossible to explain how children acquire language inthe first place. Behavioristic concepts, like "stimulus control","conditioning", "generalization andanalogy","disposition to respond"etc., cannot explain language acquistion in children because, they know alot more than what experience teaches them. Human speech is unbounded andstimulus free, which is what distinguishes them from non-humans ormachines. Whereas both an automation and `animal behaviour' can showunbounded output, they are not stimulus-free, a characteristic directlylinked to `creativity' of the human mind. The essential purpose of humanlanguage is not just communication. Rather, it serves as an expression ofthought.Animal language in contrast, exists only for communication.eg.,communication system in `bees', which though shares with human languagethe property of "displaced reference",is not `stimulus-free' orcreative.

In the Rennaisance period, grammars were modeled mainly on the structureof Greek and Latin.The famous "Port Royal Grammar"(PRG), compiled byClaude Lancelot (1615-95) and Antoine Arnauld (1612-94) and firstpublished in 1660, was written in French.It was part of a movementagainst the superiority of Latin in academic studies. However, it's realimportance lies in the fact that it was the first comprehensive attemptto present a `mentalist-theory' of grammar, with a view to incorporatethe universal properties of human language, viz., by postulating thelevels of deep and surface structure, and which implicitly containedrecursive devices providing for infinite use of the finite means, as anyadequate theory of language must. An earlier attempt in this directionwas the rennaisance grammar Sanctius's Minerva(1587). Noam Chomsky'stransformational generative grammar was in fact a modern and moreexplicit version of the Port Royal Theory.As Chomsky points out,philosophical grammars lacked the intricacies of the mechanism thatrelate deep to surface structure, and there was no detailed investigationof the character of the rules that appear in grammars or the formalconditions that they satisfy.For example, it was by and large assumedthat the deep structure consists of actual sentences in a simpler or morenatural organization.

And, most important, word order was a topic completely ignored in thefirst Cartesian revolution, though it certainly has found its due placein the second Cartesian revolution.

The linguistics of Port-Royal and its successors developed also inreaction against the empiricist doctrines of Vaugelas. We thus find thatbothfirst and second cognitive revolutions developed as a reaction toempiricism.

In 1960s when Chomsky was arguing against the taxonomic methods of hispredecessors, he meant the structuralists, and the decriptivists, whowere concerned only with the `surface structures' of languages. That is,astructuralist grammar describes the `langue' (as against the `parole'),orthe relationships that underlie all instances of speech in a particularlanguage.

But this `langue' (in the sense of `Saussure') is very different from theuniversal grammar that is innate in the human brain. Firstly, `langue'isnot universal, nor is it language independent. eg., there can be `langue'for French, Swahili, Bangla etc., and secondly, the structuralists thinkthat instances of grammatical sentences of a particular language areinscribed as it is, in the memory of individuals, and when theyspeak,they draw on these sentences.

That brings us to Language Acquisition. A lot of work has been done onthe topic since CL was first published and Chomsky has since made verybold proposals on the subject. Here is a discussion on that.

If UG is innate, it has to be physically pesent somewhere in the humanbody, and that can only be in the brain.The Cartesians had recognizedthisfact, and Humboldt had even postulated that there is a `critical period'of development, for acquisition of language. The ideas were however, notvery precise. Chomsky has, over the period, given a more precise pictureof this speculation. It is not just the UG which is determined `apriori', concepts too are. Kant(1787)in `Critique of pure reason' hadclaimed that there are some knowledge which are `a priori' knowledge,which are independent of experience and even of all impressions of thesenses.For example, as Chomsky (1997) points out, the property ofdiscrete infinity, which is exhibited in its purest form by the naturalnumbers 1, 2, 3,... , is not taught. The mind already possesses the basicprinciples,as part of our biological endowment.

Thus,Chomsky adopts the the rationalist hypothesis: the structure of thebrain is determined `a priori' by the genetic code, the brain isprogrammed to analyze experience and to construct knowledge out of thatexperience.

Way back in 1983, in an extremely informative and enlightening interviewwith the psychologist and science journalist John Gleidman, Chomsky hadthe following to say about the `language organ'and the Universal grammarthat he proposed exists in our brain.

1) Language acquisition critically depends on the existence of agenetically preprogrammed language organ in the brain.If the mind has very important innate structures,it must be physicallyrealized in some manner.

2) It is a common practice to say that UG is innate. To be more precise,It is the mechanism of language acquisition that is innate.

3) In fact, language development really ought to be called "languagegrowth" because the language organ grows like any other body organ.The following points further clarify what he means by "growth" of thelanguage organ.

a)There seems to be a critical age for learning a language, as is truequite generally for the development of the human body,--for example, theonset of puberty is genetically determined, despite the fact thatenvironmental factors do play a major role in physiologicalgrowth.Language growth then is simply one of these predetermined changes.

b)That is,"growth", to some extent, is "modification".Thelanguage organinteracts with early experience and matures into the grammar of thelanguage that the child speaks.The brain's different linguisticexperience, viz., English versus Japanese -- would modify the languageorgan's structure.

c)Still related to `growth', elsewhere, in an interview called `TheNancho Consultations',he has following to say:There is a significant change at about puberty,and which happens to thelanguage organ too.As a result,acquiring a second language after thatpoint is probably done by rather different mechanisms.

Functionalism has been strongly against the theory that grammar is a"mental organ". According to Chomsky(1979), Every organ has certainfunctions, but these functions do not determine the ontogeneticdevelopment of the organism.

Chomsky's ideas on language acquisition are totally opposed to theempiricist (structuralists and behaviorists alike),doctrines. Empiricistsadopt a special form of dualism: they treat human bodies as biologicalorganisms, but treat the human mind as somehow divorced from biology, abiological clean slate that can be written on in any number of ways.Theyview the mind as largely unformed and plastic at birth and take itsconcepts to be molded and in fact created anew through training, forminghabits etc. ie., through `generalized learning procedures'.

SYNOPSIS

The leading ideas of the book have already been discussed above. Hence,a lengthy exposition will follow only if necessary. The Chapters in thebookare not numbered. The editor's introduction which may be called the firstchapter in the book, is somewhat isolated from the actual book.The chapters of CL are enumerated after that.

I) INTRODUCTION FOR CYBEREDITIONSJames McGilvray

It is an informative introduction, discussing the importance andrelevance of Cartesian thoughts vis--vis the empiricist ideas.It has alengthy expos on the creative aspect of language use,includingnativism,and on rationalism vs romanticism vs empiricism. It also has asmall write up on politics and education.

II) CARTESIAN LINGUISTICS

Following are the chapters of Chomsky's book `Cartesian Linguistics: AChapter in the history of rationalist thought'.

I) INTRODUCTION

In the introduction Chomsky defines the term `Cartesian Linguistics',which is a return to the classical concerns of seventeenth, eighteenthandearly nineteenth centuries, which have roots in earlier linguistictheories.

II) CREATIVE ASPECT OF LANGUAGE USE

In this chapter, Chomsky draws from wide ranging works of variousphilosophers spread over the rationalist and romantic period of history,and also dating back to the time of Aristotle,to prove that the"mentalist" or the "creative aspect" of human languagefaculty has beenan idea long accepted through the ages, before the modern period. Eventhose who superficialy seem to oppose the idea, are actually arguing forit. A consequence of this idea would be the postulation of something akinto `Universal Grammar',and that is done only by Humboldt.

To illustrate, Descartes convinced himself that all aspects of animalbehaviour can be explained on the assumption that an animal is anautomation.But man has unique abilities that cannot be accounted for onpurely mechanistic grounds. The essential difference between man andanimal is exhibited most clearly by human language,which manifests itselfas the "creative aspect" of language use, and which is unbounded inscopeand is stimulus free. Thus, in addition to body it is necessary toattribute "mind" -a substance whose essence is thought,-to otherhumans.

La Mettrie and Bougeant apparently disagreed with the doctrine that human and animal languages or talking machines differed in any significant way.Chomsky however proves from their own argumentsthat this supposed counterargument merely reaffirms the Cartesianposition regarding human and animal language.That is, they are saying thesame things that Descartes and Cordemoy are saying.

Basing his arguments along Cartesian lines, Chomsky argues also againstthe position taken by modern linguists such as Ryle, Bloomfield, Paul,Saussure, Jesperson and others, who tend to attribuite the creativeaspect of language use to "analogy" or "grammaticalpatterns".

It is Humboldt who tries to give a defining characteristics to thecreative aspect of language use.He characterizes language as a"generative activity" rather than a "product". It indicatesthat there isa constant and uniform factor underlying this "mental labour"; it isthiswhich Humboldt calls the "Form" of language.It is only the underlyinglaws of generation that are fixed in a language. Thus, language has thecapacity to make infinite use of finite means. The concept of "Form"includes the "rules of speech formation" as well as the rules of"wordformation" and the rules of formation of concepts that determine theclass of "root words".

Humboldt's notion of `form' or `organic form' is parallel to Goethe'smuch earlier theory of "Urform" in biology."Urform" is akind ofgenerative principle that determines the class of physically possibleorganisms; It indicates that there is coherence and unity beneath all thesuperficial modifications determined by variation in environmentalconditions.

Chomsky's points out that Humboldt leaves many questions unanswered.For example, he doesnot give a precise character of the "organic form"ina language.That is, he doesnot attempt to construct a particulargenerative grammar. He doesnot clarify the distinction betweencompetence and performance, a distinction which dates back to Aristotle'sfirst or second grade of actuality of form (De Anima, book II, Chap1).Lastly, there is no mention of word order.

III) DEEP AND SURFACE STRUCTURE

It is Port-Royal Grammar (1660), which makes the most serious attempt toincorporate the idea of `creative asepct of language use", by postulatingthat the general form of all grammars have an universal underlyingstructure. According to them,there are three operations of our minds,"conceiving, judging and reasoning" ,of which the third is irrelevanttogrammar(it is taken up in the Port-Royal Logic, which appeared two years later,in 1662).

James Harris's `Hermes', too attempts to incorporate the structure of themental process in the structure of grammar. Similarly, Cordemoy and Lamymake a distinction between inner and outer aspect of language, which inthe terminology of transformation generative grammar would be deepstructure and surface structure, and which are not identical. The formeris the underlying abstract structure that determines its semanticinterpretation; the latter the superficial organization of units whichdetermines the phonetic interpretation and which relates to the physicalform of the actual utterance, to its perceived or intended form.The deepstructure that expresses the meaning is common to all languages, so it isclaimed, being a simple reflection of the forms of thought. Thetransformational rules that convert deep to surface structure may differfrom language to language.This deep structure is nevertheless, related toactual sentences, in that each of its component abstract propositionscould be directly realized as a simple propositional judgement.

An extensive study of relative clauses bring forth the distinctionbetween meaning and reference, or "the comprehension of an idea" vs."theextension of an idea" in the modern terms. PRG makes special reference tothe "operations of our minds", viz.,the conjunctions, disjunctionsandother similar operations of our minds, and also all the other movementsof our souls, such as desires, commands, questions etc.

Besides the Port Royal Grammarians, other philosophical grammarains whocontribute to similar study are the encyclopedist Du Marsais,Beauzeetc. Even earlier grammarians provide additional instances of analysis interms of deep structure, in their analysis of imperatives andinterrogatives etc., which are analyzed in effect, as ellipticaltransformations.

Du Marsais follows Port Royal grammarians in regarding the theory of deepand surface structure as, in essence a psychological theory, not merely ameans for the elucidation of given forms or for analysis of texts.

IV) DESCRIPTION AND EXPLANATION IN LINGUISTICS

A distinction between General(universal) Grammar vs Particular Grammarshould be a natural corollary of Cartesian thought. Beauze , Du Marsais,D'Alembert contribute to this distinction, which Chomsky summarizes asfollows:General grammar is therefore the rational science of the immutable andgeneral principles of spoken or written language (Langage), whateverlanguage (Langue) this may be.A particular grammar is the art of applying the arbitrary and usualconventions of a particular language to the immutable and generalconventions of written or spoken language.There were however, counter currents too. Vaugelas's work,"Remarques surla langue Franaise (1647)" had only one goal, to describe usage, but notto discover the underlying principles.He represented the empiricists ofhis time.

V) ACQUISITION AND USE OF LANGUAGE

The central doctrine of Cartesian Linguistics as has been sketched in thethree chapters above, is that the general features of grammaticalstructure are common to all languages and reflect certain fundamentalproperties of the mind.If so, Chomsky's logical conclusion is that,thereare then, certain language universals that set limits to the variety ofhuman language.The study of the universal conditions that prescribe theform of any human language is "grammaire gnrale".Such universalconditions are not learned; rather they provide the organizing principlesthat make language learning possible, that must exist if data are to leadto knowledge. By attributing such principles to mind, as an innateproperty, it becomes possible to account for the quite obvious fact thatthe speaker of a language knows a great deal that he hasnot learned.

The earliest exposition expressing these thoughts is Herbert ofCherbury's `De Veritate (1624)'. Herbert expresses much of thepsychological theory that underlies Cartesian Linguistics, just as heemphasized those aspects of cognition that were developed by Descartesand later, by English Platonists, Leibniz, and Kant.Leibniz emphasizes,in `Nouveaux Essatis'(1765) that what is latent in the mind requiresexternal stimulation, to become active. Leibniz makes this explicit inmany places. Thus he holds that "nothing can be taught us of which wehave not already in our minds the idea". Similarly, Cordemoy concludesthat language learning presupposes possession of "wholly developedreason"[la raison toute entire].Rationalist conclusions reappear withsome of romantics as well.eg., A.W. Schlegel. According to Humboldt, alanguage "cannot properly be taught but only awakened in the mind; it isbecause of the fundamental correspondence of all human languages, becauseof the fact that "human beings are the same, whatever they may be",thata child can learn any language .Humboldt made another very importantpoint that, the functioning of the language capacity is, furthermore,optimal at a certain "critical period" of intellectual development,anidea further developed by Chomsky in his theory of `language organ'(discussed earlier).

Chomsky points out that these ideas are in contrast to empiricistspeculation of modern linguists.The strong assumptions about innate mental structure made byrationalistic psychology and philosophy of mind eliminated the necessityfor any sharp distinction between a theory of perception and a theory oflearning.Ideas of this sort regarding perception were common in theseventeenth century, but were then swept aside by the empiricist current,to be revived again by Kant and the romantics. Current work can be takenasa continuation of the tradition of Cartesian Linguistcs, and thepsychology thatunderlies it.

VI) SUMMARY

Here Chomsky summarizes the work in the preceding chapters.

CRITICAL EVALUATION:

I think the greatest contribution of CL is that it brings out absolutelyexplicitly the fact that the ideas of generative grammar have existed forcenturies. Work in this tradition, which is still going on and willcontinue to do so, has one primary aim-to make the ideas precise.

With regard to theory, I have the following points to make.

Chomsky adopts the rationalist doctrine "that language serves as anexpression of thought", not denying that it also serves incommunication. I don't think there can be any disagreement on that.However, not all `thoughts' require language. All our `unconscious' acts,which include our daily routines etc., are not done by means of`conscious language'.One might even term some of those actions as`habits', but there can also be `first-time-actions', which donot requirea conscious use of language even in thought. That is, `language' is moreat a `conscious level' of the cognitive domain. Then, it must be the`unconscious domain' which uses `mentalese',(exact nature of which isunknown), as language.In short, perhaps we have to posit different levelsof consciousness to explain various cognitive processes.Thus, instead ofsaying that language is a module around a central seat of intelligence,inthe Fodorian sense of the term,one would like to propose a `hierarchy' of`consciousness'.

The book is very readable, written in a very lucid style, without anytechnicalities. Hence, in my opinion, the book can be appreciated even bynon-linguists, and may be even by high school children; and forlinguists, it is just as relevant today as it was forty years ago, sincework on Universal Grammar and language acquisition is far from over.

Humboldt, Wilhelm von. 1999. On Language: the Diversity of Human LanguageConstruction and its influence on the Mental Development of the HumanSpecies, 2nd edn., ed, M. Lomansky, trans, P.L. Heath, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.